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February 20, 2012

[For all that, his
captors betrayed glimpses of humanity, even humor: small acts of kindness;
quirky after-dinner games; shared confidences and reminiscences. But their
ruthless intent was never in doubt, the former hostage said, speaking
anonymously because he feared reprisals against his family.]

By Declan Walsh

LAHORE, Pakistan — A campaign of
high-profile kidnappings has provided the Pakistani Taliban and its allies with
new resources, arming insurgents with millions of dollars, threatening foreign
aid programs and galvanizing a sophisticated network of jihadi and criminal
gangs whose reach spans the country.

Wealthy industrialists, academics, Western aid workers and relatives
of military officers have been targets in a spree that, since it started three
years ago, has spread to every major city, reaching the wealthiest
neighborhoods, Pakistani security officials say.

For many hostages, the experience means a harrowing journey into the
heart of Waziristan, the fearsome Taliban
redoubt along the Afghan border that has borne the brunt of a C.I.A.
drone-strike campaign.

One young Punjabi businessman who spent six months there in Taliban
hands last year described it as a terrifying time of grimy cells, clandestine
journeys, brutal beatings and grinding negotiations with his distraught,
distant family.

For all that, his captors betrayed glimpses of humanity, even humor:
small acts of kindness; quirky after-dinner games; shared confidences and
reminiscences. But their ruthless intent was never in doubt, the former hostage
said, speaking anonymously because he feared reprisals against his family.

During his captivity, four teenage suicide bombers were undergoing
instruction, taking indoctrination classes in the morning and carrying mock
explosive vests equipped with push-button detonators in the afternoon.

“Their mantra was: ‘One button and you go to heaven,’ ” he
recalled.

Kidnapping is a centuries-old scourge in parts of Pakistan, from the
tribesmen who snatched British colonists in the 19th century to the slum gangs
that have preyed on Karachi business families since the 1980s. The national
total has varied only slightly in recent years: from 474 kidnappings for ransom
in 2010 to 467 last year, according to Interior Ministry figures.

What has changed, however, is the level of Taliban involvement.

In one case, a 70-year-old German aid worker and his 24-year-old
Italian colleague, who disappeared from the city of Multan on Jan. 20, are
being held by militants in North Waziristan, a senior security official
confirmed.

Others in militant captivity include Shahbaz Taseer, son of the
assassinated former Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer; two Swiss tourists who
vanished as they drove toward the Iranian border; the son-in-law of a retired
four-star army general; and Warren Weinstein,
a 70-year-old American snatched from his home last August, days before he was
due to leave Pakistan, and said to be held by Al Qaeda.

The Pakistani Taliban are unapologetic, saying the kidnappings earn
valuable funds, offer leverage to free imprisoned fighters and are a political
statement against longstanding American efforts to drive Al Qaeda from the
tribal belt. “We are targeting foreigners in reaction to government demands
that we expel the foreign mujahedeen,” said the deputy leader of the Pakistani
Taliban, Wali ur-Rehman, during an interview at his North Waziristan
stronghold.

The kidnappings are continuing even as Pakistani security forces have
seemed to blunt the militants’ ability to inflict mass casualties: suicide
attacks fell by 35 percent in 2011, according to the annual report of the Pak Institute for Peace Studies, while the
number of people killed in attacks fell from 3,021 in 2009 to 2,391 last year.

But the lull may be temporary, experts warn, and meanwhile the
militants are filling their coffers with ransom money.

The business is run like a mobster racket. Pakistani and foreign
militant commanders, based in Waziristan, give the orders, but it is a combination
of hired criminals and “Punjabi Taliban” who snatch the hostages from their
homes, vehicles and workplaces.

Ransom demands typically range between $500,000 and $2.2 million,
although the final price is often one-tenth of the asking amount, security experts
say. The kidnappers’ methods are sophisticated: surveillance of targets that
can last months; sedative injections to subdue victims after abduction; video
demands via Skype; use of different gangs for different tasks, often with
little knowledge of one another.

The victims tend to be wealthy — the police have recovered lists of
prominent stock market players from kidnappers — and, often, from vulnerable
sectarian minorities such as Hindus, Shiites and Ahmadi Muslims.

So it was with the young Punjabi businessman held in Waziristan last
year. “They told me upfront I had been taken because I was an Ahmadi,” he said.
“They consider us fair game.”

Snatched by armed men as he drove home from work, the hostage was
locked in a cellar for a month before being driven to Miram Shah, the capital
of North Waziristan, under the cover of a woman’s all-covering burqa.
He would spend five months there, imprisoned in a house with about 20 fighters
from the various Taliban strands: Afghans, plotting to attack NATO soldiers
across the border in Afghanistan, and Pakistani Taliban, drawn largely from the
Mehsud tribe, pitted against their own government.

Over time the hostage developed relationships, of a sort, with his
captors. Allowed to roam the compound, he fell into casual conversation with
some, helped others with the cooking; sometimes, after meals, the militants
would sit in a circle and make funny faces at each other. The hostage was
encouraged to join in.

“The idea was to keep a straight face. At the end, everyone would
burst into laughter,” he recalled with a wry smile. “It was funny and surreal.”

Some offered strange privileges. Before recording one hostage video,
his captors thrashed him with a water hose. But afterward, two apologetic
Afghan fighters sent for painkillers from the bazaar, and insisted on massaging
his bruises with olive oil.

Still, there were frequent reminders of the militants’ cold-steel
ideology and readiness to kill. As reading material, they offered a treatise by
Al Qaeda’s ideological leader, Ayman al-Zawahri; at night they watched, on
laptops, videos of Pakistani soldiers being executed, or carefully chosen excerpts
from Hollywood titles: Muslims killing Christian crusaders in Ridley Scott’s
“Kingdom of Heaven,” or Sylvester Stallone battling Soviet soldiers in
Afghanistan in “Rambo 3.”

Help seemed tantalizingly near at times. The sounds of chatting women
and playing children drifted from the house next door. Climbing to the rooftop
for exercise, he could see a Pakistani military base, its flag fluttering, on
the other side of town. Twice, C.I.A. drone aircraft
passed overhead. Yet no rescuers arrived.

“Waziristan is very safe for the Taliban; the place is crawling with
them,” he said. “Even the non-Taliban carry weapons, so it’s hard to know who
is who.”

Not all militant kidnappings are Taliban-related. In 2009, nationalist
rebels in western Baluchistan Province held an American United Nations official
for two months; Baluch nationalists are also suspects in the case of a British
Red Cross doctor snatched from Quetta in January.

But no group can match the Taliban’s reach. In the seaside megalopolis
of Karachi, Islamist kidnappers lurk in the sprawling slums, targeting rich
business families. Sharfuddin Memon, an adviser to the home minister of Sindh
Province, said militants recently demanded $6.6 million in return for a wealthy
industrialist. But in December, the police cornered the kidnappers on the city
outskirts; after a shootout, three were killed and the hostage walked free.

“We’ve learned to tell the difference,” Mr. Memon said. “With local
criminals, it can take six weeks to resolve a case; with the Taliban it’s more
like six months.”

The Taliban’s extended range is most striking, however, in Punjab,
Pakistan’s most populous province, where it has allied with criminal gangs to
mount daring abductions, often in broad daylight.

One morning last August a gang driving motorbikes and a black S.U.V.
dragged Mr. Taseer, the son of the assassinated governor, from his Mercedes sports
car in a wealthy district of Lahore. Now Mr. Taseer is being held by Uzbek
militants in Waziristan, said Mr. Rehman, the deputy Taliban commander.

Aiding the Taliban’s reach into Punjab is its alliance with Lashkar-e-Jhangvi,
a vicious Sunni sectarian group whose cadres dominate the Punjabi Taliban and
which has developed strong ties with Al Qaeda. “We see the nexus between the
two groups in most cases,” Interior Minister Rehman Malik said.

Sometimes the kidnappers demand more than money. When the son-in-law
of Gen. Tariq Majid, a former chairman of the military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff
Committee, appeared in a hostage video last year, he reportedly called for the
release of 153 prisoners as well as $1.4 million in cash. The hostage
identified his captors as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.

The problem is hurting foreign aid efforts on behalf of poor
Pakistanis.

In 2010, Mercy Corps closed 44 offices in two provinces after the
Taliban executed an employee taken hostage in Baluchistan. Mercy Corps
reportedly paid $250,000 to free four others who had been captured. The
abduction of the two Europeans in Multan last month, and the disappearance of a
Kenyan aid worker two days later, stirred fresh alarm among aid workers.

Interior Minister Malik said the government did not encourage payment
of ransom, but conceded that, for those who ended up in Waziristan, there were
few alternatives — even if it meant financing the insurgency.

When the young Punjabi businessman was freed last year, his family
sent a cash payment to the Taliban. Just before his departure from the Miram
Shah compound, a handful of fighters bid him farewell.

It was summer, they explained, so it was time to trek across the
jagged mountains into Afghanistan, for a fresh season of battle against
American and NATO forces.